The Brook and Its Children

"O brook, running down your mossy way,

I hear only your voice

And the murmuring fir-trees;

Where are your children?

Where are the magic stones, your children?"

The brook answered me sweetly,

"I left them on the Alp,

In steep fields.

They were trying to hold me back,

To keep me from this shady path of happiness;

But I went onward day by day

Until they got used to seeing me pass.

Now, they stand there in an enchantment

On the mountain-side,

While I travel fields of elm and poplar."